24 - Season Four

The "Jack Bauer Power Hour" gets its groove back.

By Peter Schorn

Updated: 18 May 2012 4:51 pm

Posted: 5 Dec 2005 7:22 pm

24 is my favorite TV show; it's the only one I'll reschedule my life around, and I refuse to settle for seeing it on tape. Other shows, I'll simply tape or TIVO, but "The Jack Bauer Power Hour" (as I refer to it) must be watched immediately. Its intense mix of screw-tightening suspense and surprising plot twists and outbursts of violence really hits the spot for anyone bored to death with predictable formula television.

One question that has dogged the show since its first season is how can they do it again; how can they plausibly put Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) and Counter Terrorism Unit through the grinder again. After all, how many bad days can one man have? While the first two seasons were excellent, the third season suffered from some implausible situations - even by the show's flexible standards - and didn't really get its game on until the last third of the season which rose to the lofty heights of the show at its very best.

Fortunately, Season Four finds 24 back in excellent form. Since many people wait until these seasons are released on DVD and they are best enjoyed without any spoilers - personally, I hated even the giveaways in the commercials for the show - needless to say I'll have to be extremely vague in synopsizing and reviewing the show.

Opening literally with a big bang as a passenger train slams into an explosive-laden truck, a mysterious motorcyclist rides through the carnage, shoots a man and takes his briefcase. Jack, meanwhile, has found love - albeit on the QT - with Audrey Raines (Kim Raver), an aide to Secretary of Defense Heller (William Devane), who also happens to be his boss and her father. When Heller and Audrey are kidnapped in a spectacular attack, Jack returns to active status despite having been fired from CTU; and when Heller's captors prove to be an Islamic terrorist group that intends to try him for war crimes, CTU Director Erin Driscoll (Alberta Watson) reluctantly allows Jack to intervene on the victims' behalf - with a little help from some old friends.

After the meandering plot of Season Three, this year's narrative proves far more focused and hard-driving; some episodes begin with more action before the first commercial break than feature films have in their finales. Meanwhile, the absence of Jack's nubile but hapless daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) lowers the season's babe quotient, but it also eliminates her distracting and superfluous subplots as well (mountain lion, anyone?).

But if there is a major quibble to be had with this season, it's that too many crucial pieces of the plot fall too perfectly into place. The bad guys always have another fallback plan, which begs the question what would have been the point of all these other schemes if Jack hadn't been able to stop the first one. It's ultimately as if they knew that Jack was going to screw things up for them.

Another beef with Season Four is the dearth of appreciation and/or professional courtesy shown Jack while he's 'on the case', so to speak: After saving a Presidential candidate from assassination and Los Angeles from both nuclear and biological holocausts, you'd think that he would have been granted carte blanche to employ whatever methods he deemed necessary. He probably shouldn't have to qualify his intentions at this late date in the show's history. Additionally, while the show has always enjoyed certain geographic concessions - such as the warp drive-equipped SUVs that allow Jack to get across LA in the span of a commercial break and quick-search technology that would leave Google green with envy - the lax personnel screening methods of CTU remain a problem.

That said, while there are a few flies in the honey, this is still an excellent season. Unfortunately, I can't rave about all the cool characters, scenes and story twists because I don't want to spoil them for uninitiated viewers; and the colder you go into watching any season of 24, the better.

While 24 has always boasted plenty of excellent performances, this year's cast is uniformly strong, starting at the top with Sutherland's turn as Jack Bauer. Over the years, Jack has gone to hell and back in dedication to his country, and Sutherland makes us feel the emotional burden of this thankless service. Meanwhile on a slightly lighter note, returning tech sourpuss Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) is joined by a new colleague named Edgar (Louis Lombardi), whose ill-tempered nerd-offs add tense (what else?) humor.

This season was controversial for its subject matter, and received complaints from Muslim organizations before a single episode even aired. But while the producers ran token PSAs during the show to dissuade viewers from associating all Muslims with terrorists, it's to their immense credit that they didn't punk out in the name of political correctness and displace the season's threat to a disgruntled band of Eskimos or those notoriously hostile Amish.

Keeping the characters and situations culturally and historically revelant, as was not done in other recent hot-button projects like The Interpreter, elevates the show's dramatic impact, and creates a palpable foe for Bauer to battle against. Clearly due to American audiences' appetites for these sorts of prescient stories, this season enjoyed the highest ratings in the show's history. At the same time, the producers leaven their champion view of the tireless efforts of America's foot soldiers with the hardly-unique view that bureaucrats and self-serving politicians frequently intrude upon their underlings' attempts to preserve the peace.

In a dangerous world, 24 may be an idealized fairy tale about vanquishing terrorism in the span of 24 short hours, but even taken as wish-fulfillment it's still a flat-out thrill ride that will blow you away. The hardest part of watching the show during its broadcast run was waiting 167 hours between each episode; but thanks to DVDs like 24 - Season Four, you can get your fix immediately. Just remember to take occasional food and bathroom breaks.

Score: 9 out of 10

The Video Having watched the show when it originally aired in HDTV, the 1.78:1 transfer does a good job of reproducing the look of the broadcast. The handheld cinematography retains it rather grainy look without many flaws. Overall detail is good and shadow detail is decent, though black levels could be a bit stronger. Edge-enhancement is minor as is filtering. Colors are good and free of noise and objectionable compression artifacts were absent.

Score: 8 out of 10

Languages and Audio24 - Season 4 offers two aduio options: English Dolby 5.1 Surround and Spanish Dolby Surround. The discs also offer English and Spanish subtitles for the hearing impaired.

Surround activity is mostly confined to action scenes and environmental ambience, but it proves effective when the back channels kick in. Dialogue is clear and well-mixed with the score and sound effects. Silenced pistol shots are meaty and the score is resonant, but there's little likelihood of your collectors plates falling off their shelves.